The crocus hour

The first half of this new novel is set in Crete in 1981. The narrator is a young man who has come to a small, religious village for a holiday. In the main village cafe, he meets a New Zealand man, Henry Davis, who befriends him. Henry Davis soon reveals that his daughter Sally had gone missing in the village in 1979. Over a period of weeks, Henry slowly builds up a picture of his daughter and her friend Jane and explores the baffling circumstances of Sally's disappearance. He escorts the narrator to various parts of the island, pointing out the places Sally and Jane had visited, and describing the leads the police followed in their search for Sally. The second half of the novel is set in New Zealand and spans the following two decades. The narrator visits Henry a number of times during this period. He meets and gets to know Jane, who has formed a daughter-like relationship with Henry and has moved into his house. Over the years, the narrator frequently asks himself who was to blame for Sally's mysterious disappearance. Was her disappearance the result of a crime or an accident - or was she in deliberate flight from a too-protective father or too-domineering friend? As he ages, the narrator continually revises his opinions, not only about Sally, but about human relationships more generally.